Clearly the main choice is between Haste/Mastery or Dodge/Parry. Traditionally, of course, the latter boots would be the obvious choice because Haste was not a tank stat.

However... in the current climate, haste has become useful enough for us to warrant the former boots. Dodge and parry's collective status at the back of stat priority list is the primary reason for this. Not only is haste useful, but dodge and parry have also gotten comparatively worse.

I haven't turned in my quest reward yet, because I've been playing for a long time and wanted to reflect on the choice before I made it, but I am starting to seriously believe that the "DPS boots" are the better choice of the two. It's been hard getting used to dodge and parry as the least desirable tank stats. I can always reforge the haste on the Angerforged Stompers into hit or expertise to help cap that stat, whereas the dodge/parry boots don't even have mastery, so I would only get one of my top 3-4 stats (hit/exp/mast/haste) rather than three.

Part 2: The boot enchant

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most of us probably picked Pursuit of Justice as our Tier 1 talent. While the others are useful, as a tank I prefer that constant 15% movespeed increase.

This renders two of the four boot enchant options totally obsolete (in my opinion). We have the following four choices:

We obviously don't want 1, so let's toss that option out the window right off. Of the remaining three options, it's clear that the boot slot is budgeted for 175 of a stat for an enchant (barring the addition of a more expensive or rare enchant in a later tier). Movement speed takes 35 of these stat points, and we don't need it. Mastery is a good stat for us but when it comes down to it I feel like I'd rather have hit or even haste on my boots.

Of those other two, Hit is the harder one to get, and is one that we really need to cap, so I would say that it is probably my first choice of enchant, but if it's capped from gear or something, I'd probably go with haste.

Ultimately I think I'm going to take Angerforged Stompers and both reforge and enchant hit on them. I'll be able to get much more out of the rest of my gear as a result and won't have to reforge nearly as much hit on other pieces, allowing me to focus more on mastery and expertise in those areas.

Thoughts? Am I crazy or is this the new way we should be thinking about gear?

I went with the haste+mastery boots, cause dodge and parry are to unreliable.Altho mastery isnt much ahead, and Haste isnt really going high either to make much differance.

As for the enchant, im a big fan of the Sha armor enchant you didnt include, thats 150 sta.I personally also always go with Speed of Light, cause you can make so many fights a lot more interesting, and can turn the tide with it, compared to the others.I am very likely to swap into Pandaren step for raids, altho theres not that much movement in the first few bosses, and there there is, im more likely to use the Sha Armor enchant and have PoJ instead.

Nitro Boosts are a good substitute for Speed of Light in occasional use

I didn't know there was a 150 stam boot enchant; that's a compelling option. I definitely agree that 175 hit beats 140 mastery if you are going to hit cap. IMO 8% speed has always been a very poor substitute for 15%.

I got lucky and picked up Gara'jal's boots last night, but I'm not sure which Sha boots I would have gone for. If the Haste was the lower budgeted stat I would lean that way, but it seems like a toss-up to me.

Out of curiosity, I haven't checked (since my boots on Pally have no enchant), but are you discounting the Mastery/ms enchant based on Pursuit not stacking with it, and has that been confirmed?

Because on my Druid right now, Feline Swiftness stacks with Move Speed and all of them stack with Cat Form; I thought they applied the same logic to Pursuit (talent should stack with everything). 155% passive move speed is for the win, and I have 125-ish as a Bear also using the same enchant. I can check that with Pursuit after work today though (cause I have a bunch of Step enchants lying around)

Darielle wrote:Out of curiosity, I haven't checked (since my boots on Pally have no enchant), but are you discounting the Mastery/ms enchant based on Pursuit not stacking with it, and has that been confirmed?

Because on my Druid right now, Feline Swiftness stacks with Move Speed and all of them stack with Cat Form; I thought they applied the same logic to Pursuit (talent should stack with everything). 155% passive move speed is for the win, and I have 125-ish as a Bear also using the same enchant. I can check that with Pursuit after work today though (cause I have a bunch of Step enchants lying around)

They don't stack,i have both atm (managed to cap hit without the boots enchant so i went with it) and i'm still moving at 115%